Part 13 (1/2)

I gazed at Ray's truck sitting just a few feet beyond the telephone booth. How confusing it had all turned out to be. Now all our lives were linked and twisted together like that brush I had found caught in the bend of the creekbed. In one telephone conversation, I could never explain it to anyone, not even to Abby. That Ray was a simple and good man, that he had married out of loneliness, but now he loved. That he had married, as most people did, for life.

”How is Father?”

”He's fine. Pouring himself into church work so he doesn't miss Mother so much.”

”And you?”

”I'm not so different from him, I suppose. I've been filling in for her. It makes me feel as if I'm doing something to carry on her legacy.”

I summoned up some courage. ”Does Father ever ask about me?”

She hesitated before answering. ”Yes. He asks about you often.”

But I could tell by something in her voice. She was lying.

Twenty-two.

On the morning that Edward first called me, Father was already away from the house. Sleeping in late was a bad habit I had formed from idleness in the weeks since Mother's death. When I heard the telephone, I bounced out of bed, raced down the steps, nearly tripping over my nightgown in the process. When I reached the telephone, I grabbed the receiver and gasped ”h.e.l.lo” into it.

He wanted to meet me downtown, so I dressed in my favorite dress, spent a ridiculous amount of time styling my hair, then I took the streetcar down to the shopping district. He was waiting for me outside the five-and-dime, and when he saw me, he straightened up, stamped out his cigarette on the sidewalk, and took me inside for lunch at the snack counter.

We sat across from each other at the booth. For a few minutes, I couldn't think of anything to say, but strangely, the lack of conversation didn't seem to disturb him, and therefore it didn't disturb me, either. Instead, I studied his face, the smooth skin across his forehead, the barely discernible shadow line where beard would begin had he not shaved, a gleaming set of teeth. As he placed his order with the waitress, I noticed the way his smile rose just a tiny bit higher on the right side of his face.

Every time I found myself looking too closely at him or gazing for too long a period of time, I turned my eyes down into my plate and kept on eating, amazed that I could eat at all.

He fell into talking about himself. ”When I was about twelve, my folks sold the ranch outside of Durango. They bought a hotel in Estes Park that they still operate to this day.” He told me about the famous people who had visited their hotel, including governmental leaders, baseball players, and even a few actors and ac tresses out of Hollywood.

”Will you return to Estes Park after the war?” I asked.

”I think not.” He crossed his arms into his lap after he finished eating. ”I have other plans. I want to strike out on my own, make something new happen with my own ideas.”

”That's exactly the way I feel, too.” Then I told him about my particular interests in Egypt, about Akh-en-aten, his wife Nefer t.i.ti, and their six daughters.

Later, we rode the streetcar to the Museum of Natural History, where we walked through the exhibits. At each one, we paused to study the display and read the information. And at each one, we finished and turned to walk away at exactly the same moment. As we strolled about, he rested his hand on the small of my back and guided me through the doorways and up the stairs between floors. And something about that light touch on the back of my dress filled me with a body of pride I'd never felt before. We ended up riding the streetcar to Civic Center Park, where we spent the rest of the day talking and meandering about. Everywhere lilies were blooming. Lilies, the flower of weddings.

Even as the afternoon sun began to sink down low in the sky, we remained together. He told me that his infantry division, at Camp Hale high in the mountains, was in survival training for the coldest of temperatures and the harshest of conditions. They were honing their mountaineering and skiing skills in preparation for secret campaigns against the Germans, for war in Southern Europe.

He stopped. ”The land up there.” He gestured west, toward the mountains. ”It's the best terrain for skiing any of us has ever seen. When this war is over, some of us plan to come back.”

In many regards, he was much like the other soldiers I'd met. Mostly they were lonely; they wanted a friend, a dance partner, someone to listen to their dreams and plans, someone to care if they came back dead or alive. Most of them were small-town boys away from home for the first time. They all had ideas and hopes for the future that they wanted to share with someone. But there the similarities ended; everything else about Edward was different. The confidence in his smile, the way he hung his hands easily and relaxed at his sides, the way he moved in closer as he spoke to me. That smile that pulled me in like ice cream melting down a cone.

I wanted to know everything about him, all the minute details of his past, his present-day thoughts and dreams, and everything that had come in between. Had he had many girlfriends?

As we walked onward, he continued to think out loud to me. ”We'll come back here and buy up the property, develop the ski runs, and construct a base lodge, build places for equipment and restaurants. We'll turn it into a resort for skiing. Have you ever tried it?”

”Yes,” I answered. ”I can make my way down the mountain, although not with much finesse. I fall into the snow more often than I care to remember.”

”But you get back up,” he said.

”Yes, sometimes I have to force myself, but I do try again.”

He took my hand then. He entwined each of his wide fingers between each of mine, and he looked at me with such intensity I had to turn away. And later, when we parted, when he raised my face up to his, I couldn't look at him then, either. I felt the soft warmth of lips upon mine, and that was all. I fell into a cave of stillness, and for that brief moment, nothing else on earth mattered. Not the war. For the moment, even my mother's death feathered away.

A woman shoved me aside. She knocked me away from Edward's lips and out of my daze. I said goodbye to Edward, turned away, and mounted the steps to the streetcar. But as it pulled away, clanging up the curving street, I watched him until he disappeared from my sight. He hadn't moved, and I touched my lips. It had been the best day, the perfect day, even better than dreaming, because it had been real.

That night, I tried listening to the radio but soon clicked it off. A book on Pueblo Indian religion that had earlier held my fascination could no longer hold me still. I couldn't read about others' lives when my own life had taken such an unexpected turn, when my own life held more promise than anything to be found on mere paper. I was experiencing the mixture of emotions others in love had felt for centuries. I had moments of fear, then reservation, and finally a sudden thrill knocked all the rest away until the cycle started over again. At night, I tossed and turned until I worked the sheets off the corners of my mattress. At home and by myself, I turned the radio volume high and danced with an imaginary Edward, and other times, I walked around with china plates balanced on the palms of my hands.

Twenty-three.

The night after I'd spent another full day at Camp Amache, Ray came up beside me as I was was.h.i.+ng the dinner dishes. I was tired. At the camp, I'd stood on my feet watching Rose help out in one of the junior high school English cla.s.ses. She was so proud to finally be able to teach English, as had always been her dream. For two hours, I had listened and watched as she taught a segment on grammar and then led her pupils through an exercise. I was hoping she'd have time to break away and talk to me, to tell me what she had been so worried about the last time I'd seen her. But she was so enjoying herself, proud of every rule of grammar she knew so well. I didn't want to ruin her day, and besides, she never left the cla.s.sroom anyway. Later I'd found Itsu, who taught me another lesson in ikebana.

Ray searched out a cup towel and started drying off the dishes one by one. I knew he wanted to speak to me about something that was bothering him, so I waited until he built up the words to say it.

”You were gone a long time today.”

”I'm learning how to arrange flowers, j.a.panese-style.”

”What for?”

I smiled. ”Just to learn something new.”

He looked back at the plate he was drying. ”I still don't know why”

”Ray, I like to do new things, to go to different places.”

”So you were at the camp all day?”

”Yes.”

He looked damaged.

I turned off the faucet. ”Ray, there isn't enough for me to do around here.” I sighed. ”No, that's not exactly true. I'm sure other farm wives are very busy. I just don't know what else to do, how to help around here. At the camp, it seems there's so much going on, and I'm learning new things. It makes me feel useful again.”

”You're useful here.”

I turned back to the sink, wiped a circle of suds around on a plate, rinsed it, and pa.s.sed it over to Ray. ”Not very.”

He dried the plate. ”You could do more on the farm.”

”Like what?”